Creative Labs is about to do the impossible!

Discussion in 'Technology' started by Fleetwood Mac #1, Aug 2, 2005.

  1. Fleetwood Mac #1

    Fleetwood Mac #1 New Member

    Mar 28, 2002
    Queens, NY
    Many of us know that the music we hear from CD's are compressed to 16 bit, 44,100 Hz PCM (WAV) from the original 24 bit, 96,000 Hz studio recordings. There's a quality loss in the process and when we re-compress the WAV files to MP3 format the losses become huge. We have learned that the informations lost in the processes can never be recovered. Well, Creative Labs is close to the release of it's latest PC sound processor that, according to them, can make the mp3's sound not only as good as the WAV files they were compressed from but as pure as their original 24-bit studio recordings!

    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1813719,00.asp

    I have their top-of-the-line sound card (Audigy 2 ZS) which I enjoy very much and thought it could not get much better. Now I'm ecstatic even though I don't think they will be able to deliver exactly as much as they promise. Lets hope the pricing will be done reasonably.

    Here's the first review I could find (waiting for more) after Creative Labs recently demo'ed the X-Fi Processor for public,

    http://gear.ign.com/articles/617/617336p1.html
     
  2. Foosinho

    Foosinho New Member

    Jan 11, 1999
    New Albany, OH
    Club:
    Columbus Crew
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    99% of people can't hear anything above 22kHz anyway (which requires a 44kHz recording, via Nyquist). That's why that sampling rate was chosen. More bits is good, as you'll get "cleaner" sound, but you don't lose much in a 44kHz recording vs the original 96kHz.

    That said, we've always known that in sampling music in this way you lose information. Ditto for lossy compression like MP3.

    That's a lot of marketing speak! I see in the article where they are talking about "reconstructing" some of the high-frequency data missing from things like MP3 files via signal processing. Now, I'm not a signal processing expert, as it's been about 5 years since I took those courses in EE, but that seems like a pretty amazing claim.
     
  3. Fleetwood Mac #1

    Fleetwood Mac #1 New Member

    Mar 28, 2002
    Queens, NY
    Some would say "pure bu*****t" given their reputation (of over-promising and under-delivering) but this might just be the innovation that gains them some credibility among the purists (I'm not one). We will see.

    I just found a lengthy, more useful review;

    http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050705/index.html
     
  4. servotron

    servotron New Member

    Mar 4, 2004
    St Paul, MN
    I haven't owned anything from Creative Labs since the original SoundBlaster card. For that, they will always be OK in my book. I don't think CL made the AdLib, which I also had :D
     
  5. Fleetwood Mac #1

    Fleetwood Mac #1 New Member

    Mar 28, 2002
    Queens, NY
    The over-hyping never really bothers me as long as their new releases are better than any existing ones available on the market. Only problem I have with Creative is the awful customer support (looking at their support forum I'm among the hundreds to suffer) but I guess that is expected from a near-monopoly.

    Anyways, there are new informations available on the Soundblaster X-Fi card:

    http://www.creative.com/press/releases/welcome.asp?pid=12163
    http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6284647.html?tag=blog

    Four versions (X-Fi XtremeMusic, Platinum, Fatality FPS and Elite Pro) of the product will be out this month with prices ranging from $130 to $400.
     
  6. zpjohnstone

    zpjohnstone Member

    Feb 27, 2001
    Finger Lakes, NY
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Like Foosinho basically said, they're not salvaging any lost data. They're using math to guess at what the lost data is, and signal processing to make it sound "better".
     
  7. Fleetwood Mac #1

    Fleetwood Mac #1 New Member

    Mar 28, 2002
    Queens, NY
    Of course, they will not do what is impossible to do. If anyone was 'misled' by the title of this thread, well that's how the Creative marketing department get you. ;) Looking past the attention-grabbing title I never mentioned that they will salvage any lost data.

    That said, I'm still excited that the PC audio just got much better than it ever was. The processors are already out in some stores.

    Sound Blaster X-Fi ExtremeMusic
    Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
    Sound blaster X-Fi Fatality FPS (for gamers)

    More informations from the official website available here;
    http://www.soundblaster.com/products/x-fi/technology/

    (Reviews to come later)
     

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